conductor Jorma Panula

Seinäjoki city orchestra’s string quartet and women’s choir Tuulivoima with soloist Elja Puukko.

Vaasa church Saturday 20.5 at 17:00

Ticket 25 €
Senior, student 20 €
Choir 15 €

In the piece, composed by Jorma Panula and written by Pekka Santala, a farmer encounters a haunting memory in the silence of the church, where his grandfather’s father drove three hungry and ragged child auctioned boys away from his door without giving them food. The farmer comes to terms with himself and his past and realizes the meaning of his own work to plow, sow, mow and repair. With a renewed mind, he bursts into a chorus of praise, to which the church people join. The important message about justice is still relevant after 37 years.


The story of the work began in the old cemetery of Ilmajoki, whose tombstones remind of the devastating famine years of the 19th century. “We found a subject, a small burial ground, where kids were buried in the 19th century,” says Jorma Panula, the lead composer-maestro of the piece. “Read the libretto, imagine it, there’s so much atmosphere and matter in it that it just makes you sing”, Panula describes the composition process in his own Panula-like concise style.
The work premiered in Kurikka church in 1984 and has since the premiere been performed abroad and all over Finland.